Anyone regarded as influential within the digital technology community.
Term history
The first mention of the word Digerati on
USENET occurred in 1992 by
Arthur Wang, and referred to an article by
George Gilder in Upside magazine. According to the March 1, 1992 "On Language" column by
William Safire in The New York Times Magazine, the
term was coined by The New York Times editor
Tim Race in a January 1992 New York Times article.[1] In Race's words:
Actually the first use of "digerati" was in a January 29, 1992 New York Times article, "Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute", by John Markoff, into which I edited the term. The article was about a controversy engendered by a George Gilder article that had recently appeared in Upside magazine. In a March 1, 1992 "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine, William Safire noted the coinage and gave me the honor of defining it, which we did like so:
Digerati, n.pl. – people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks.
Digerati: Encounters With the Cyber Elite by John Brockman, Hardcover: 354 pages Publisher: Hardwired; 1st ed edition (October 1, 1996)
ISBN1-888869-04-6
External links
Look up digerati in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.